Bradbury: I'd love to play for Scotland, but first port of call is Edinburgh

Bradbury: I'd love to play for Scotland, but first port of call is Edinburgh

With Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend watching on from the Murrayfield stands, Magnus Bradbury made his Edinburgh comeback against the Dragons on Friday night after four months out with a dislocated shoulder.

It couldn’t have gone much better. The big flanker carried powerfully and tackled hard in a man-of-the-match performance, scoring the third of his team’s five tries for good measure.

With Scotland staring down the barrel of a pretty significant back-row injury crisis, Bradbury now looks a good bet to be involved against France in round three of this year’s Six Nations next week.

Certainly, Richard Cockerill, his club coach, is in no doubt that the 23-year-old is ready to do a job for his country next week.

“Physically, he’s ready,” said the coach. “He’s not got that many minutes under his belt but he’s now got that important first game back out of the way. And, with Scotland’s injury issues at the moment in the back-row, you’d imagine he’ll be in the frame next week.

“He put in a big shift tonight and he grew stronger and stronger as the game went on,” the coach added.

“Coming back from four months of not playing is a big ask. It’s a credit to himself, the medical team and the S&C guys that they have managed to get him in such good physical condition.”

Bradbury was understandably reluctant to get drawn into a conversation about whether he is ready to jump straight back into the dark-blue jersey for what would be only his fifth international cap – although he certainly didn’t flinch at the suggestion.

“I’d love to if I got the call but my primary focus at the moment is playing well for Edinburgh,” he said. “If Scotland comes I’ll take it with open arms but my first port of call is Edinburgh.

“It’s the first time I’ve made it out of the gym for about four months,” he added, only half-jokingly.

“It was four months of no rugby. So, once my shoulder was right, I wanted to get as strong and as powerful as possible. So I’ve come back a bit heavier – I’ve gone from 111kg-112kg to sitting at 115kgs at the moment, and I felt good out there.

“But you can’t really replicate a game in training so you saw with the first couple of hits that, well, I wasn’t exactly off the pace, but you’re just not used to that.

“It wasn’t just me. As a team, we grew in confidence. The longer the game went on the fitter we felt and the more we pulled away.

“The first three quarters of the game they were with us all the way but, as a team, we pride ourselves on being fit and being able to pull away in that fourth quarter. Quite often we know when teams are going to break.”

It just so happened it was Bradbury’s 63rd-minute try that was the breaking point for Dragons. That edged Edinburgh back into the lead for the first time since the 19th minute, and it was one-way traffic from there on in, with a brace of touchdowns from winger Duhan van der Merwe securing a comfortable 34-17 bonus-point win for the capital outfit.

“It was a turning point in the game, but I didn’t do a lot - Schoemie [Pierre Schoeman] just carried me over the line,” he concluded, rather modestly.

It is likely that Townsend will be slightly more generous when assessing Bradbury’s contribution and deciding whether it merited a place on next week’s plane to Paris.

Comments & Moderation

Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.

This website and associated newspapers adhere to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice. If you have a complaint about the editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then please contact the editor here. If you are dissatisfied with the response provided you can contact IPSO here